This past week Jian Ghomeshi flew to Portland for a live taping of Q at the historic Aladdin Theater with PDX locals Carrie Brownstein, Cheryl Strayed, Portia Sabin, Camas Davis, Daniel H. Wilson, Colin Meloy and The Thermals as guests, and I was invited to attend.

In the newsroom, we always emphasize the importance of making human connections in every piece -- that's how we bring faraway stories home. But with the Marathon bombings we all became a part of the story.

Breaking the monopoly of Mr. Slim and reforming Pemex would be a good start, and would also serve to demonstrate that the PRI is indeed interested in moving Mexico forward. It will take every ounce of his determination and perseverance to make it a reality.

Given shifting political realities, it is easy enough to imagine that the drug war will one day come to an end. Yet, in light of the power and influence of the defense establishment, draconian policies may still prevail for some time at an enormous human cost.

Mexico today is in the middle of a dilemma of governance. During the Institutional Revolutionary Party rule, Mario Vargas Llosa called Mexico the "perfect dictatorship" because it had the trappings of democracy, but was ruled harshly by one party. The challenge of the PRI under Pena Nieto is to perfect democracy.

With the inauguration of Enrique Peña Nieto of the PRI on December 1, Mexico's short history of multi-party rule entered a new chapter, after a dozen years of rule by the center-right PAN came to an end.

Ask the experts what they think the root of Mexico's problems is and you'll get a myriad of responses. However, ask the average Mexican the same question, and the answer will most likely be corruption.

In its first crack at proving critics wrong, the PRI ended up siding with its old benefactors and left an already poorly designed reform even more flawed. Is this what Mexicans should look forward to regarding the PRI's structural reform agenda?

Weeks after Mexico's presidential elections, thousands of people have turned out to protest the declared winner, Enrique Peña Nieto, and the imminent return to power of the party that ruled Mexico for more than seven decades.

While the details of Peña Nieto's personal life remain fuzzy at best, his Institutional Revolutionary Party's uninterrupted, 70-year rule of Mexico, which ended in 2000, provided ample opportunity for familiarity with its legacy of corruption.

At best, a constructive PRI will see that the path of cooperation, compromise and restraint will be the key to eventually aspiring for another shot at the presidency in 2018. But at worst, an attempt to take its bad habits to the presidency will do the country little good.

Did Marketplace's Rob Schmitz really think that, on a tour of the facility arranged by Apple and Foxxconn that he would meet underaged workers, people poisoned on the job, or people who had been hurt in a explosion?

Einstein once said, "Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death." By keeping public broadcasting funded, we ensure that Americans have access to this education right in their own homes.

Some 60 years after India's "untouchables" gained equal status under the law, many of their fellow citizens still see them as the lowest of the low. But in one boarding school, Dalit kids are treated as equals.